In college I learned art should evoke feeling. Some sort of feeling; good, bad, indifferent. Just something. I then learned other things dealing with art galleries. Art should preferably be abstract, use contemporary designer colors, and if figurative (not abstract?!?) should never carry the name of a person. In other words, in the real world, art should be detached, inexplicable, and never clash with the drapes. Maybe sterile, but what sells is the opposite of what college taught me. Fuck college right? Well, maybe not.

I've always named my works. They include still life, portraits, aircraft, very little abstract, and quite a few figures.  Each figure piece has a name, a person's name, often chosen by the model, which turns out to be a real show killer in an art gallery. Any suggestion of the image of the body as the image of a real person is really, really bad for business. There is an obsessive objectification of subject in the art world oddly missing in other venues of nakedness, such as, oh, you know, porn.

Face it. Porn is all about creating feeling. It may be a single, one dimensional, fleeting and actively physical feeling, but feeling is what it's all about. And connection to something seemingly real, is a strong component of the emotional evocation. It's a fantasy constructed through careful imagery and ancillary detail, including, however unlikely they may be, performer names. After all, who would buy a picture or movie featuring "nude 126 mixed media?" Dulls the fantasy a bit, eh?

So, when you think about it, porn is nothing more than pro wrestling. An overacted fantasy performed by people with fake names, all for the base pleasure of an audience. Wrestling, if you're into it, can get you wound up with excitement, and so can porn. But nothing in any sterile art gallery ever got my hard on, or made me want to punish the Iron Sheik.

OK, that's not true. There is plenty of emotion in art galleries (museums, too), and if you've ever experienced the intense detail of Goings, or the grand photographs of diCorcia you know it's there. If you've seen the Mona Lisa in person you know art can make you feel love. If you've stood before Guernica, you know it can make you cry. But sexual titillation is taboo, and most nudes I've encountered seemed calculated to avoid any suggestion of sexuality. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are rare, and I leave it to you to find them. Here is a good place to start. Or here.

A quick survey of figurative photography on the Internet reveals a black and white world where shadow is king and genitals don't exist. All of which is fine, technically fine, and you will find plenty of similar style here at FigureBaby. But there exists little else between the academic nude and the pornographic nude, so you have a world where subjects are well lit with little or nothing exhibited, and a world of big flat light with everything exhibited for no discernible reason.  We ask why we can't we have the best of both worlds? Why not light something broadly and show more than the shadowy suggestion of form, and have an identifiable reason, however ridiculous, to do so? Why not create something that titillates, but also exists for other reasons?

Face it, FigureBaby pictures won't be found in any gallery, not now, not ever. They are intended to stir the viewer, and I've already fought that battle over my artwork. We're not trying to create memorable images worthy of the New Yorker, earn space at the Met, or have people write about us in trade journals alongside advertisements for acrylic paints. We just want to make people smile. If you need explicit porn, there are plenty of places to find it. We don't need to do that. If you want classic figure studies, you can find them ad nauseum. If you want something in between, something not too arty and not too porny, FigureBaby is here for you. If you like it, share it with your partner, and feel. It would prevent me thinking my expensive education was wrong.



image by Tony M, graphite on bristol, 18"x24", 2005